Producing historical critical marketing studies: theory, method and politics

Abstract

Purpose-This paper calls attention to the importance of historical research within "critical marketing studies". It seeks to articulate a historical perspective based on the work of Michel Foucault. Design/methodology/approach-This paper is based on a close reading of relevant Foucaultian primary and secondary texts. Findings-Foucault's scholarship provides a useful counterpoint to the calls for critical theory to form the central paradigm in critical marketing studies, revealing a complex constellation of power/knowledge relations underpinning marketing theory, thought and pedagogy. Originality/value-This is a close reading and examination of a theoretically sophisticated, rigorous scholar who remains largely underexplored in relation to marketing theory and the history of marketing thought.

“Part of the University Lexicon”: Marketing and Ontario Universities, 1990-2013

“…In Foucauldian relations of power, nothing remains stable or unidirectional (Tadajewski, 2011). From a marketing management standpoint, the blunt and controversial nature of the name change would suggest that Western ran afoul of what Leitch and Motion (2007) prescribe for university branding: it should promote "interpretive openness" rather than narrow, finite meanings.…”

“…Most notably, we draw on Skålén, Fellesson, and Fougère (2008), who marshal critical theory and Foucault's works on discourse and knowledge/power to demonstrate how marketing functions as a form of disciplinary power. Their study forms part of a nascent body of works emerging since the mid2000s that draws on Foucauldian theory to analyze marketing practices, knowledge, and institutions (Fougère & Skålén, 2013;Leitch & Motion, 2007;Tadajewski, 2011;Varman, Saha, & Skålén, 2011).…”

A Panoramic Review of the Macromarketing Literature

“…Similarly, allowing marketing strategists to address consumer “needs” leaves unanswered whether those needs were real or, instead, are defined by the marketing system (Benton 1985). Critical marketing recognizes the role of marketing in the institutionalization of commercial practices in contemporary culture (Fırat 2012), while relying on the use of non-positivistic methods and critical perspectives (such as feminism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, or post-modernism) to understand the structural preconditions for those marketing phenomena (Tadajewski 2010, 2011). Interdisciplinarity with classically critical social sciences, and new systemic models can strengthen an epistemologically young area of research (Dholakia 2012).…”

Sanctioning value

“…Foucault registered that additional studies are always necessary to flesh out the ‘polyhedron of intelligibility’ that enables us to make sense of the formation, sedimentation and extension of a discipline (e.g. Tadajewski, 2006, 2010b, 2011, 2012), mode of thought (e.g. Zwick and Bradshaw, forthcoming), conceptual category (e.g.…”

“…Foucault’s ideas have been used to draw our attention to the role of power in producing and denying certain ways of thinking about markets, marketing, marketing theory and consumer agency (e.g. Ahmadi, forthcoming; Earley, 2015; Falconer Al-Hindi and Staddon, 1997; Giesler and Veresiu, 2014; Skålén et al, 2006; Tadajewski, 2006, 2011). These accounts often articulate how the way we think, act and engage with the world is permeated with power relations that operate at the macro-, meso- and micro-levels (Giesler, 2008; Tadajewski et al, 2014; Zwick and Bradshaw, forthcoming), subtly channelling institutional activities and consumer action in certain directions and not others at the same time as they leave room for resistance (Ahmadi, forthcoming).…”